I’m reading it all wrong. It’s lost in tone or translation. From where I’m sitting I simply can’t get the narrative correctly in my head, either way.
The Toronto Maple Leafs approached Mitch Marner and told him, “Our first priority is to sign you, but there’s a trade being offered that could land us Mikko Rantanen and the Hurricanes are asking for you in return, so what are your plans?”
That, to me, doesn’t ring out as them preferring Rantanen over Marner. Simply put, Marner and his camp aren’t negotiating at the moment so the Leafs have no idea what his intentions are. They’re granting the player his wish by not negotiating during the season and that’s why they don’t know what his plans are.
If you put yourself in Brad Treliving’s chair, isn’t it easy to imagine having to go to Mitch to ask him if he has made up his mind yet? Are you staying past this season, or do you intend to play it out and leave? If the intentions of the player are to play it out and leave and he knows that, then maybe he has to think about his hometown team and the only NHL club he has played for and maybe he has to allow them the opportunity to continue onward with another superstar winger in his place.
On one hand this may give Treliving the clarity that he desperately needed. The player wants to stay, that’s the assumption now. He has to, right? Or else he wouldn’t be leaving his boyhood team standing with their proverbial dicks in their hands, while he knowingly heads out the door and into free agency. Right?
Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this fanbase has been so terrible to Mitch Marner that all he wants now is the chance to win the Stanley Cup before giving them the finger as he leaves for nothing.
If the Leafs do manage to retain Marner past this year and they also bring John Tavares back, even with the cap ceiling skyrocketing they won’t have enough capspace to allow for a major addition. I wrote about that here, but will probably touch on that throughout the season because it’s a major topic. The “run it back” failure, year after year, has this fanbase screaming for change, but due to the Covid pandemic, stagnant cap and lack of prospects pushing their way onto the roster, the team has simply managed to retain their stars and nothing more. Now that the cap is starting to move again you want to see them have the ability to add a significant piece or two, but Marner is due another raise, Nylander and Matthews have already taken a chunk, Knies’ ELC is expiring and he has to be retained and once all of that is accounted for the team could have about $6M in capspace with a few spots to fill.
Without moving on from someone (Max Domi, Calle Jarnkrok, David Kampf, etc) that doesn’t make a loot, that’s not enough money to entice the very top free agents to join your team. They’ll add to the middle and bottom of the group, presumably. A couple of depth additions I like are Brandon Tanev and Tanner Jeannot.
In my opinion, one thing the Leafs are missing from their roster is a player that is willing to throw his body around with reckless abandon in the playoffs, in order to punish the other team. The Panthers get that from a couple of players, such as Sam Bennett and Matt Tkachuk, but the Leafs don’t really have an answer for it. Guys like Tanev and Jeannot could help answer that level of physicality.
With added strength this season, I’m interested to see what Matthew Knies can do in the post season. What I said above may not be my opinion a couple of months from now.
Scott Laughton hasn’t been good in the 2 games he has played so far. He believes he has better and I do too, but now you’re asking a guy that has gotten off on the wrong foot to find his confidence, learn the system, acclimate to a new organization after only playing for one his entire career and to do that during the stretch drive for a team that is battling to win the top spot in a very competitive division. Don’t be surprised if he’s bounced around the lineup a bit in order to find a groove.
Nick Robertson is being demoted and/or scratched at the moment and I find it hard to believe that he’ll be in the lineup for the playoffs. We’re watching the end of his time in Toronto.
Brandon Carlo, like Laughton, started poorly after the deadline but he’s looking a little better as he plays more.
Carlo has a tough task ahead of him, as he’s paired with Morgan Rielly and asked to cover for #44’s blunders. Rielly is going through the worst season of his career and I still attribute that to the fact that now, in his 30’s, he’s being asked to play defense for the first time in his career. Randy Carlyle and Peter Horachek sheltered him, Mike Babcock and Sheldon Keefe allowed him to run, now Craig Berube is telling him to look after his own end and worry about offense later. The fact that Rielly is on his 5th head coach in the NHL, is 31 years old and is still struggling with any system speaks volumes. He should be #1 on everybody’s list in terms of players to ask to waive their NMC.
Yes, giving up leads is bound to happen over an 82 game schedule. However, the Leafs were up 3-0 over Utah and were in full control of the game before Utah scored 3 goals in 4 minutes, eventually forcing OT and a shootout. They were up 4-2 over Colorado in the 2nd period and completely fell apart in the 3rd, eventually losing 7-4. They were up 2-0 against San Jose before giving up that lead and eventually dropping a 3-2 decision in the shootout. They were up 2-0 against Pittsburgh early in their game, then 5-4 at the end of the 2nd and again, went to OT before pulling out a win. This team, simply put, can’t hold a lead right now and the evidence is clear because I have only taken examples from the 5 games they’ve played in March. In those 5 games they’ve given up a lead in 4 of them, while the other game was a decisive 5-2 win for Vegas, in which the Leafs were down 5-0 before managing to score at all. This doesn’t look like a team that is locking things down and preparing for a long playoff run. It looks like a team that knows they have fire power at the top of the lineup and have the confidence to dig themselves out of a hole if they find themselves in one. This can’t be the way Craig Berube is asking them to play, can it?